Enterprises often maintain a record of people, items, and/or entities of interest. For example, a commercial retail establishment may typically use databases of customers, vendors, and/or employees. A nonprofit organization may utilize a database of donors and potential donors. Sales offices may maintain a list of potential customers. Retail establishments may maintain a database of products offered for sale. Many other scenarios are conceivable where a database of people, items, and/or entities could be useful and desirable.
Often, it is desirable to link records in a database together in a group. A typical technique of linking records in a group is to assign a unique group key to every record that is associated with a particular group, such that records belonging to the same group have the same group key, and records that are not in the same group have different group keys. It may be desirable for group keys to remain consistent over multiple runs of a record linkage process.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding components throughout the several views of the drawings. Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present disclosure. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present disclosure.